Global Pandemic, Same Conspiracy Theory
By Anyi Li
The year 2020 is indeed an “annus horribilis” for the world, brought about by an unexpected novel coronavirus -- COVID-19 -- sweeping the globe. Unfortunately, the two greatest superpowers and the most avid competitors for world dominance -- the United States and China -- both failed to lead the world in this global crisis. China is where the COVID-19 was first found, and the United States is currently the worst-infected nation in the world. Though no one could have foreseen a pandemic, many leadership failures in both countries undoubtedly aided the rapid spread of the virus. During this time, conspiracy theories, promoted by the Chinese and American governing administration, went viral.
Yet whether you are in the U.S. or in China, you will hear a conspiracy theory with the exact same content, but only the subject switched. This theory is that the virus is intentionally brooded and released to the world from a lab sponsored by the American/Chinese government. Somehow, both sides manage to scrabble fractions of evidence from different places and present a seemingly credible doctrine, especially to people who already have xenophobia and prejudices rooted consciously and subconsciously, resulting from growing up media propagandizing against foreign countries.
Although one authoritarian and the other democratic, the two administrations obviously share the same agenda: to deflect attention and blame from themselves to foreign nations, like leaders throughout history had hoped to accomplish when they, to some degree, failed to respond to a national crisis. For instance, even though it, later on, removed many corrupt officials who were slow to respond to the COVID-19 crisis from office as a punishment for their misconduct, the Chinese government continues to try to avoid mentioning that it is the Chinese government’ undemocratic structure that enabled the provincial government to delay and temporarily conceal information from the Chinese citizens and the Chinese central government. On the other hand, the American government hopes to prevent Americans from learning that even though the Chinese government delayed publicizing information about a novel coronavirus within China, it has not lied to the world as many in America believe. In fact, China began to regularly update the virus with the World Health Organization as early as January 3, only a week after the report of the first case of pneumonia of unknown cause. Moreover, the Chinese CDC briefed the U.S. CDC about COVID-19 on January 4, released the genetic sequence of COVID-19 on January 10, and implemented a very strict lockdown on Wuhan on January 23, 2020. With just this simple timeline, Americans could rightfully blame no one but its own government’s short-sightedness, arrogance, and slow-response toward the so-called “China-virus,” which have led to a death toll surpassing the U.S. death toll in WWI, Korean War, and Vietnam War combined.
In conclusion, amidst this global pandemic, both an authoritarian and a democratic country’s governments’ leaders use the same conspiracy theory with minimal scientific evidence to cover up the weaknesses specific to each of them: China’s nondemocracy and the United States’ incompetence.